


9+1

by beautaefulmistake



Category: ATEEZ (Band), Kpop - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Atiny - Freeform, M/M, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 22:57:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18214793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautaefulmistake/pseuds/beautaefulmistake
Summary: Whenever Wooyoung and San walk down the street together, they become a paradox. In which Wooyoung hates his job as a florist and San, a tattooist adores every little thing about his





	9+1

Wooyoung hated flowers. It was simple and he had never put much thought to it. Flowers attracted bugs, were useless, not that pretty and Wooyoung hated them.

He wasn't an artistic person, his bouquets weren't the prettiest and the lack of knowledge of what colors would go well together made them look as if a child had arranged the flowers. His clients liked to call him creative for that. And as long as Wooyoung could continue to earn money, he was okay with it.

"Honey, hi, how are you doing?" He smiled subtly as he held his phone in between his ear and shoulder since he was making a bouquet.

"I'm doing great," he not-exactly lied. He wasn't doing great, he wasn't doing horribly either. He was just doing. "What about you? How's dad?"

"Both of us are good, you know you don't have to worry about it." A sigh inevitably escaped his lips as soon as he saw the customer get out of the shop holding happily the bouquet he had quickly made.

"I'm glad, is he taking his meds?" Not even a second after the customer had left, another one entered.

Wooyoung was familiar with the black-haired who had some bold red strikes. He owned the tattoo parlour that was in front of his flower shop.

He bought nine roses every single day.

"Yes, baby, he is, don't worry." The amount of times his mother told him to not worry about the situation was partly what worried him the most, but he let it go, he always did. "What about you? Are you taking your meds?"

San, the tattooist, waved too energetically and flashed a bright smile to the moody florist. Generally, he would loudly say good morning and ask how he was feeling. Today, however, it was the first time he had entered the place and Wooyoung was on the phone, so he decided to politely stay quiet.

Wooyoung didn't return the smile back and simply put the nine roses on the counter, he knew San knew how much to pay so he didn't even bother to say the price out loud.

"Mom, honestly... You know I don't need the meds anymore." San looked at him with a puzzled expression, curious about the topic. Wooyoung looked back at him expressionless. "I'll call you later."

"Ten thousand won, right...?"

"San, you come to the shop every morning to buy nine roses for who knows what, yes, you know it's ten thousand." San looked at the counter, —at the roses, more specifically— and back at Wooyoung, wearing his usual smile once again.

"Could you please give me one more?" Until then, San hadn't especially annoyed him, he was just another customer and he preferred to give away a few flowers than make a full bouquet.

So, he nodded and placed one more rose on the counter with the others. Normally, he would have at least given him a plastic bag to keep them in. However, the first time San had gone to the shop he had told him how negative plastic was for the environment. He started buying paper bags after a long research that night and still, the guy would refuse to get a bag, 'there are people who will need it, my shop is right there, it's fine'.

"How much is it now?"

"Eleven thousand one hundred" Wooyoung muttered, not enjoying the amount of socializing with clients he was doing.

"Perfect." He handed the exact amount of money and took the roses carefully to not pinch himself with any of them. "Here you go."

When Wooyoung lifted his head he found San handing one of the roses to him. "What are you doing?"

"It's for you."

"For me." His words were more of an affirmation than a question and San chuckled at the reaction. Wooyoung's slight frown but inability to not let the corners of his mouth turn upwards in a small, silly smile. It was cute. "Why?"

"We all need a little something sometimes." San took the roses and quickly exitted the shop since he had left his own open and unattended.

The next day San entered the shop at ten in the morning, bought ten roses, handed one to Wooyoung and said goodbye with a playful smile on his lips. 

After that, it became a routine. Wooyoung would prepare the ten roses in advance and San would happily leave one of them on the counter, without more exchange of words than the needed, not much more than San's loud 'good morning!' followed by Wooyoung greeting him back in a mutter. One of the days, even, when he was about to run out of roses, he decided to save those for San, even if another customer got mad at him. He knew the bubbly tattooist would be there every day, and he didn't want to break his trust.

"So, what do you do for fun?"

"For fun." Once again, Wooyoung's question came out more like an affirmation, which made San chuckle. Maybe it was a funny little habit of him.

"Yeah, like... I don't know, I personally draw all the time, although sometimes I do enjoy going out." 

"That's nice." Wooyoung, who had barely heard what San said, handed the flowers to him.

"Thank you, Woo."

"We're not friends, San, we don't have nicknames for each other." The thing with the tattooist was that it didn't matter how many times Wooyoung tried to discourage him, it didn't matter the way or how harsh his words were. San would always come back and he would always hand him a flower.

"I think we kinda are." Wooyoung looked at his slight smirk and looked back at the flowers he was making into a bouquet.

"We're not, you're like, the human incarnation of the smiley emoji and caps lock" San showed a playful grin back.

"And you're like the human incarnation of a frown." He extended his hand, tapping slightly the other's forehead and chuckled. "But we compliment each other."

"We don't compliment each other." Wooyoung's monotonous tone made San, once again, giggle.

"Alright then, see you." San took the ten roses and handed one of them to Wooyoung, who looked at it and back at him. "Come on, take it."

"You don't have to do this every day..." He shook his head, pushing the other's hand back.

"Please take it, it's a present." Maybe it was the softness in San's gaze or how his room looked prettier each day with the roses that kept on accumulating in the vase and that he, against his own will, wasn't able to throw away.

But Wooyoung took the rose.

"Thank you."

"Thanks to you, for bearing with me every day." For once, it was Wooyoung who laughed. San wasn't expecting the high-pitched tone, but he also wasn't expecting such reaction from his comment. So he just smiled back.

"Thanks to you for being the one who bears with me, I can be... grumpy." San didn't know about Wooyoung's dad, about his mom and about how he had to run a flower shop without even wanting to be away from the people he loved. However, San was aware of the fact that he didn't know exactly what was going on in the other's life and that was more than enough reason for him not to judge.

"If I didn't enjoy being around you, I wouldn't stay here more than necessary."

And as much as Wooyoung didn't want to say it, he did. "I actually enjoy being around you too..."

Wooyoung had never been in a tattoo parlor, he had never been attracted to permanent images in his body engraved with needling pain. Quite literally. Yet there he was, in front of the big glass counter, waiting for San to appear in any moment.

"Hey, Woo! I hadn't seen you there, how are you?" San said smiling and placing himself behind the counter, leaning on it to be closer to the other.

"I'm as well as I was this morning, thank you."

"I'm glad." He hummed. "May I ask why you're here?"

"Well, I... Wanted to get a tattoo..." If there was one thing San wasn't expecting was Wooyoung asking him if he would tattoo him. In fact, there were all sorts of things that he thought of when he saw the purple-haired standing there, but none of them was the fact that maybe he was now a client.

"Oh, of course... Yeah, yeah, what did you want?" He stumbled over his words as he noticed the faint smirk on Wooyoung's lips.

"I want two lilies, on my back, as if they were falling from the upper side of my body." Wooyoung's base idea of the tattoo was great because it gave San a lot to work on and he liked that, he liked to leave his own little mark in every tattoo he did.

"Black and white, colors, just the lining...?"

"Just the lining is fine, I want it simple." San nodded as he wrote everything down, then looked at the boy in front of him. "Can you sit there? It'll just take me a couple of minutes."

"Of course." He walked over one of the comfortable sofas that were on one side of the shop, right beside a vase in which there were only two roses left. "Why do you buy ten roses every day?"

San looked up from the drawing and faced Wooyoung, then quickly looked back at his work, they were the only ones in the shop so he didn't pay much attention to either his tone or his words. "I give them to people who cry or are too agitated after getting the tattoo."

"Oh." Was all that he let out. He found it sweet and caring, but he would never admit such thing hastily.

Seven minutes later, the drawing was done and Wooyoung already had the washable contour of it stuck to his back.

"It's lovely..." He mumbled as San held a mirror in front of him so he could check out his back on the bigger mirror behind him.

No one had told Wooyoung that getting a tattoo wouldn't hurt, however, he had always thought people were overreacting and, although it did hurt, it couldn't be as bad as they were implying. He believed so until San started tracing on the same portion of skin more than once.

"How are you doing? In this zone it usually hurts a lot..."

"Great." He chocked back a sob.

"Tell me about it, why are you getting two lilies?"

Wooyoung debated internally if he wanted to let San know more about him or if he should just continue on keeping everything to himself. But he knew he would give in at some point.

"It's my mom and my dad's favorite flower." He hissed at the pain, San mumbled a chain of 'sorry's. "Lilies portray love, ardor, and affection for your loved ones."

"It's... Really nice that you're doing this, it's a kind gesture towards them." He wiped the excess of ink and continued talking to distract him. "Why are you getting it now?"

"My dad is sick so I figured... yeah." San supposed the way of finishing the sentences was some sort of 'I don't want to talk about it', so he didn't ask more about the topic.

"Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert? I'm thinking introvert... You like your time alone."

"Introverts desire temporary seclusion, not loneliness," he mumbled, followed big a short yelp of pain. His back felt as if he had lied down on a fire mattress.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, it's about to be over." And San didn't lie. About a minute after he wiped the tattoo for the last time and smiled at what he saw. He had done a good job.

"Is it done?" Wooyoung's defeated tone wasn't as different as his usual monotonous one, but he could notice the tiredness in it.

"It's done, and very pretty in my opinion." San's excited voice deflated from the moment he noticed Wooyoung was crying to the moment he leaned forward and wrapped the boy in between his arms.

Many customers and a long career, but he had never seen someone crying over a tattoo as much as Wooyoung was in that moment. He hadn't even cried or complained at all while he was getting the tattoo. And that's when San knew that he wasn't crying because of the tattoo, he was crying because of what it represented.

"Don't cry, Woo..." He felt the smaller boy sobbing onto his chest, wetting his t-shirt with the tears that uncontrollable tears that sprung from his eyes.

"I'm so scared of losing him." Wooyoung muttered in between sobs and gasps for air. "I don't want him to die."

San could feel the fear and the emotion in his voice, in the vibrations against his own chest and the arms he had tightly wrapped around his torso.

"I know you don't want to lose him, but you should focus on enjoying the time with him instead of crying because he might leave." He nodded against the other's chest and remained silent, taking in the advice and trying to calm down. San, on the other side, wondered about what he could talk about that the other was so passionate about he would have to stop completely to talk about it. "Why do you like flowers so much?

"I actually don't like them." Wooyoung muttered without looking at San, still hiding his face on the other's chest. "Why do you like flowers so much? You buy flowers for your clients, to decorate the shop, to bring your parents, your friends..."

"I love flowers, they're so delicate and simple, they make the perfect present and... It's maybe because as humans we desire to own things that are alive."

"I was expecting something like... They're pretty and they smell nice." San chuckled at the answer and nodded.

"I could still tell you that, or I could tell you about the irony on how we kill flowers because they're beautiful-" Without expecting it, San's words were cut off by the male in his arms, who, looking up and smiling faintly, finished the sentence.

"And we kill ourselves because we're not... How many times have you gotten to tattoo that on someone?" This wasn't the same Wooyoung that answered coldly to him every morning, the one with monotonous tone and a furrowed eyebrows. This time it was a soft looking boy, the Wooyoung that had broken down and cried in his arms.

"Many, many times." And when both of them laughed, they knew it was the turning point of their relationship.

For the following days, whenever San went over to the flower shop, Wooyoung would already have the ten roses ready and would also happily accept the one that was offered to him. They never went back to what happened that day at the parlor, nor touched Wooyoung's dad topic. San would just ask about how the tattoo was going and if he was following the steps after it, but never about how broken his voice sounded or about how much pain he could see in his eyes.

"Good morning!" San entered the shop happily as he did every morning, even happier than a regular day. He wanted to show to the florist his brand new rose tattoo, that may look lost in the sea of tattoos that covered his body, but for him, it now had a special meaning attached to a new special person in his life. However, he frowned as soon as he didn't see the ten flowers in the place in which Wooyoung placed them, he knew something was off.

"Good morning, can I help you?" A middle-aged woman was standing behind the counter now. She was showing her bright teeth in a wide smile that didn't reach her eyes, which looked just as sad as Wooyoung's did that day.

"I... Where is Wooyoung?" The woman's smile deflated, but this time San could feel how it was real and, mostly, honest. 

"You must be the good-looking young man that comes and visits him every single morning." He tilted his head slightly in confusion. He supposed he was, in fact, the good-looking young man she was referring to. But again, if those were words were supposedly from the stoic florist, and San didn't know how to take it.

"I believe so." The woman didn't stop on smiling with her eyes.

"What did you need, honey?"

"Wooyoung...?" San mumbled quite insecurely as he dragged his fingers along the wooden counter.

"Oh! He's taking care of his father, it's been a while since they've had a day to share with each other, so we figured today was a good one." An honest, relieved sigh escaped his lips. At least he knew now that Wooyoung's father was doing fine.

"I'm glad he's doing well then, could you... Can I have nine roses please?" The woman, who at this point San had supposed was Wooyoung's mother, made her way to the zone in which they kept the red flowers. "Actually, could you please add one more?"

"Of course," He noticed a faint chuckle and then he proceeded to hold the ten roses, taking one out and handing it to her. "What's that for, honey?"

"It's for Wooyoung, I give him one every day so I figured..." Once again, her smile covered her features and she received the small gesture.

"Thank you for being there for him, he really needs someone at the moment and I'm glad I can count on someone like you, he talks a lot about how much you have helped him throughout the last weeks." It took San by surprise but the sweet words were engraved in his heart, and he knew they would stay there for a long time. Even when he walked out of the shop and continued with his day he couldn't forget about the fact that he was important for someone, thing he thought wouldn't happen.

Of course San was important for his family and friends, his clients loved him and many said they wouldn't get a tattoo unless it was him holding the inked needle against them. But no one needed him like Wooyoung, even if none of them knew that.

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards and nodded politely. "I should be the one thanking him, I can be tiring but he always puts up with me."

"He's tired all the time, honey, the last thing that makes him tired it's you." San wasn't sure about the blooming feeling in his chest, however, and after a bit of small talk between the two on how people didn't really buy flowers anymore, he left.

And it took him twelve more daily roses —which he didn't even get to give to his mother, the shop had been closed ever since— to see Wooyoung again. It was then when he discovered that he needed him as much as his mom had confessed that was the other way around.

The feeling lingered from his fingertips, which he wished could brush against his warm skin again, to his head, in which emotions and thoughts mixed up leaving him dizzy and lovestruck. At least that's what he supposed.

"Hi." Wooyoung smiled. As if he hadn't been gone for the past two weeks. Even if San felt like he should be angry, he couldn't help but smile back at the male.

"I missed you."

 

"I missed you too." He almost breathed out. If San hadn't been attentive enough, he would have missed it and maybe he wanted to. Maybe he didn't want his heart to race that fast just by four simple words.

"How have you been? What... What happened?" Wooyoung's lips formed a thin line and San immediately regretted asking. He was expecting the worst.

"My dad is under a new treatment so they needed the most help possible around." San gave a half-relieved sigh.

"I'm assuming that since you're here he's feeling better..." The moment Wooyoung's face lit up and smiled with all his features, San was sure that the woman he had seen that day was his mother. No doubt.

"Yeah, yeah... He's doing a lot better, thank you."

"I'm glad." Honesty covered his words as honey as he looked down for a moment in shyness after looking back at him. "Did your mom give you the rose?"

He could have swore he noticed a blush creeping on Wooyoung's cheeks. However, he didn't say anything.

"Yeah, she did, thank you so much... I needed it."

He needed it.

"I really did miss you, you know?" San had never told anyone they missed them, because he had never missed anyone he had gotten to see again. He missed his deceased grandmother and sometimes he would say out loud that he missed he. But to no one in specific, maybe to himself, maybe to feel that he was still connected to her in some way.

Here, San had missed Wooyoung dearly, he had missed the laughter he only got to hear once, he missed his sporadic smile and above all, he missed how he felt when he was with him. And now he had the opportunity to tell him.

"I really did miss you too."

Wooyoung and San had never hung out anywhere besides their workplaces. That's why sitting on San's living room's couch felt strange and unnatural, in a way. On the other side, Wooyoung resting his head on San's shoulder as they watched Modern Family felt beyond natural. It felt meant to be.

"Do you want anything?" San mumbled placing his arm around the other's shoulders. This was the most intimate moment they had had since the day Wooyoung got his tattoo done.

"I want you not to move." Wooyoung chuckled. Again. San had heard him chuckling many more times since that morning and he couldn't help but giggle along with him. "I'm very comfortable."

"Me too..." He said, resting his head on the other's, earning a muffled laugh this time.

San looked around the apartment in hope to find the flowers he had given him every day for the past couple of months.

"They died." He turned to Wooyoung, who was not only looking at him but also dangerously close to his face. "It's been two weeks since I got the last one and they last about-"

"I'm going to kiss you." San waited for him to mumble a soft 'okay' and proceeded to capture Wooyoung's lips with his.

The kiss was sloppy and due to sporadic smiles between the kiss, their teeth clink against each other a couple of times. For a couple of minutes it seemed like they couldn't get enough of each other, San held Wooyoung as the latter placed soft kisses all along his cheeks and nose.

If he had been told two months ago that the cranky florist would be smiling widely at him after the most gentle kissing session he had ever been in his life, he would have laughed. If he had been told that two days before, he would have smiled dreamily and whispered 'I surely wish so'.

They maybe were the type of couple who didn't remember the day they got together, and maybe none of them officially asked the other to be in a relationship, but both of them knew what they felt for each other.

San would compare his lover from time to time with a flower, he needed love and attention to grow stronger, and when he did, it was beautiful. Wooyoung, on the other side, would compare San with he tattoos he makes. Staining his skin forever as he leaves a mark in his soul that he can't get rid off.

"Woo?"

"Yes, Sani?" San smiled.

"We're not friends, San, we don't have nicknames for each other." He tried his best impersonation of Wooyoung, who just laughed and hit his chest playfully.

"Shut up, what did you want?"

"I don't see myself loving anyone beside you." 

"You're not asking me to marry you, are you?" San laughed and shook his head as a negative answer. Although he wouldn't have minded asking Wooyoung to marry him. He didn't need more time to know who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. "Okay, continue..."

"I forgot! And it was super sweet!" This time, it was Wooyoung who blurted out his typical high-pitched laughter while San wrapped his arms around the voice and crushed him. "Don't laugh at my fading memory!"

"B-but you al... you always-" Wooyoung's laughter died down gradually until San placed a peck on his lips and then he could only giggle out a few words. "I love you."

Wooyoung had already told San he loved him. Once at a party, he was so drunk he couldn't stop singing Elvis' Can't Help Falling In Love and telling San how much he meant it while he was tucking him in bed. Or that time San had to leave the flower shop quickly because he had forgotten an appointment with a client and he let out a "I love you!" Before leaving, which was happily returned by Wooyoung.

But it had never been like this. He hadn't gotten to be face to face with a sober Wooyoung in between his arms telling him that he loved him with nothing more than honesty and love in his eyes.

"I love you too."


End file.
